Wednesday, August 29, 2012

A question from Jim Korkis:

[What colleges teach Disney related courses and what is the descrption of those courses? I know Western Illinois University does one. I know Paul used to teach one in Utah. Is there a listing somewhere?]

Monday, August 27, 2012

A reader of the blog, Tyler Wentzel, emailed me to let me know that he is selling a copy of the magazine Literary Digest which contains the article about Kay Kamen and Disney merchandising titled Mickey Mouse, Financier. Email: tyler.wentzel@gmail.com if you are interested.

Friday, August 24, 2012

This just in from Douglas Marsh:

[A postcard image posted by Didier Ghez has piqued my interest. It
depicts the interior of the Seven Dwarfs cottage, with Snow White
perched on a tiny balcony inside. But this is a photo of an actual
place. The back explains that it was built at "the Olympia," based on
the work of Walt Disney.

Here's a quick look at what I was able to find on line. That's the fun part of the internet-- tracking things like this down.

Based on what's out there, I'm fairly certain that this was part of
the 1938 "Radiolympia." This was a British trade show that introduced
new radios and (later) television sets to the public. It started in
1926. In 1936 television was first demonstrated. By 1938 there was such
interest that a complete model TV studio was built, with free exhibition
broadcasts by the BBC. (Although you did have to pay 6 pence to go into
the studio, rather than watch through viewing windows from the
outside.)

According to one of the participants in the broadcast, Maureen
Potter, the Snow White section was performed only for the broadcast, and
was not a regular part of the stage show. (It was repeated throughout
the run of Radiolympia.)http://www.reference.com/browse/maureen_potter

So... does this mean that the charming Dwarf's cottage was part of
the broadcast studio? Another part of the show? Or entirely separate?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

DG: Are there a lot of visual documents in the catalog which do not appear in the
“main book”?

JBK: Yes,
because that is the main function of the catalog: to serve as a guide to our
comprehensive Snow White exhibition
at the Walt Disney Family Museum. I’m proud of the illustrations in The Fairest One of All, and there are a
lot of them, but their purpose really is to illustrate the text. The catalog is
the other way around: it’s organized around the images, and then the images are
supplemented by the text.

DG: What will be the main surprises for Disney enthusiasts?

JBK: Mainly,
I think, just the tremendous variety and beauty of the artwork generated during
production of the film. We’ve all seen a fair sampling of Snow White production art, reproduced in various books and
articles, but the visual riches of this film aren’t exhausted yet—not by a long
stretch. This exhibition encompasses an amazing wealth of production art, from
concept art and model sheets through story sketches, layout drawings,
background paintings, and cleanup animation drawings as well as the finished
cel setups seen in the film. The art is drawn from the collections of both the
Walt Disney Family Foundation and the Walt Disney Animation Research Library,
and includes dozens of pieces that I don’t think have been seen before. For
anyone who is able to come to the Museum in person while the exhibition is
running, I highly recommend it! But the catalog is designed to reflect all
that, and it’s a feast for the eyes in its own right.

DG: Why release two books about Snow White
at the same time?

JBK: It
wasn’t originally planned that way. When we decided to do The Fairest One of All, it was just because it needed to be done,
and we weren’t thinking in terms of the timing. But then it turned out that the
publishing timetable coincided neatly with the 75th anniversary of the film,
and that led to the idea of a special Museum exhibition to mark the occasion,
and that led to the idea of a
separate book that would serve as a catalog for the exhibition. And the next
thing we knew, we had two Snow White
books in the works at the same time.

DG: What are the main chapters in that second book?

JBK: There
are twelve chapters altogether. The first chapter introduces the early stages
of Snow White story development in
the mid-1930s and illustrates the production process the studio used at that
time; the last chapter is about the success of the finished film and the
recognition it received around the world. The other ten chapters, in between,
follow the design logic of the exhibition, which in turn follows the continuity
of the film itself. In effect, you walk through Snow White’s story, from
beginning to end, by way of this extraordinary collection of art that brought
it to life on the screen.

DG: Are there some pieces of information in the second book, which do not appear in
the first one?

JBK: Yes,
actually there are. The basic historical account of the film doesn’t have the
depth or detail of that in The Fairest
One of All, but I’m proud to say the exhibition includes a number of
drawings and paintings that were used for highly specialized effects in making
the film. And for each of those pieces we were able to put in little
explanatory paragraphs to demonstrate how they were used in production. So the
end result, in this book, is that we have kind of a general overview of the
film’s history (I call it “Snow White lite”), punctuated with individual
closeups of these fascinating little details. I’m really happy that we were
able to give these two books separate identities, with exclusive features and
qualities of their own.

Didier Ghez Why and how did you decide to work on a new book about the making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?

JB Kaufman: I think I had
always had the idea in the back of my mind. There have been some very good
books about Snow White, but I always
had a feeling there was a lot more to the story that hadn’t been recorded yet.
Then when I was in San Francisco, talking with Diane Disney Miller about
another Walt Disney Family Foundation project, we started discussing the idea
of pursuing this in a serious way. I think she thought of the idea and she
thinks I thought of it, so let’s compromise and say we both thought of it at the
same time. But no matter who thought of it, I think we were both excited right
away about undertaking this project.

DG: What were some of the most interesting documents and sources of information you
uncovered while conducting research for the book?

JBK: On one hand,
there’s such a tremendous wealth of Snow
White documentation that it’s hard to single out individual documents—the
impressive thing is just the sheer volume of material. It took literally years
to go through it all, but it was definitely worth it, because when you start
with the ideas discussed in story conferences and follow them all the way
through production—by way of the drafts, the sweatbox notes, the exposure
sheets, sometimes the retake orders, and everything in between—you get a real
sense of how they developed and evolved on the way to the screen. The Walt
Disney Archives and Animation Research Library were indispensable sources for
this information, of course (a big selection of the Snow White cutting records was unearthed while I was doing my
research, so I latched onto those too). And the Walt Disney Family Foundation’s
own collection was also invaluable, and filled in a lot of gaps in the
production story.

On
the other hand, I wanted to reconstruct the context of the movie by tracing the
history of the “Snow White” story before Walt tackled it, so I wound up getting
a crash course in the history of folklore. And some wonderful documents turned
up in that part of my research, too. Maria Tatar, an internationally known
folklore authority, gave me her very kind assistance in tracing the roots of
the story, and other specialists illuminated specific aspects of it. And I
learned a lot about the various stage versions at some of the theatrical
archives in New York. Along with that, my friends at some of the major film archives helped me turn up some
wonderful documents and images from earlier film versions of the story.

DG: Over the years, did you interview any of the artists who had worked on the
movie?

JBK: Yes,
as a matter of fact. I’m amazed to realize that it’s been over 30 years (!)
since I first started seriously researching film history, and at that time
several of the key Snow White artists
were still alive and happy to talk about their experiences. At the time I
wasn’t actively pursuing the idea of a Snow
White book, but several of the Disney artists I interviewed—in particular
Bill Cottrell, Grim Natwick, Ken O’Connor and a few others—had some extensive
and insightful comments on this feature that had been such a major event in
their lives. So when we did decide to undertake this book project, those
interviews were invaluable.

DG: What are some of the key discoveries you made while tackling this project?

JBK: There were quite
a few, but I think the main thing that impressed me was watching Walt’s creative
process at work. It’s one thing to be told that Walt Disney had a creative
mind, but it’s a different thing to see it in action. At the beginning of story
development he really is open to any and all ideas, and his own ideas evolve
considerably in the course of production. As they do, they get increasingly
elaborate and ambitious. And as he sifts through this incredible wealth of
ideas and settles on the direction he wants to go, he gets very specific and
detailed, and constantly refines and perfects every aspect of the picture as he
goes along. He can shift instantly between the grand overall view and the
meticulous, painstaking details, and he manages to stay focused on both at the
same time.

DG: What are the most important chapters in the book from your point of view?

JBK: They’re
all important! There’s one very long chapter that examines the film in detail,
section by section, delving into the production of each sequence and the
finished result on screen. That one chapter by itself accounts for nearly half
the page count of the entire book, so it will probably be a key chapter for
most readers. In the last section of the book, about the aftermath of Snow White, there’s a chapter about
return appearances by the Seven Dwarfs—their scenes in public-service shorts
produced during the war, and so on. I love to find the unexplored nooks and
crannies of film history, so that’s a pretty important chapter for me.

DG: Are you working on any other books about Disney at the moment?

JBK: Yes,
actually I’m neck-deep in researching a followup book on the making of Pinocchio, and that’s turning out to be
a fascinating subject too. Stay tuned!

Friday, August 17, 2012

1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles: Here is a great picture and a series of three outstanding articles just sent by David Lesjak for the Disney History blog. I think you will enjoy them as much as I did.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Some of you will enjoy this astonishing English postcard. The caption reads "the House of the Seven Dwarfs as built at the Olympia, 1938 by Richard Costain Ltd. from the Walt Disney & Mickey Mouse Ltd. drawings in the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.]

Monday, August 13, 2012

Walt's People - Volume 12 has just been released! As always it is first available on the Xlibris web site and you will be able to get it on Amazon in a few weeks.

I truly believe this is the strongest volume in the series, to date. It is 584-page long and contains a few interviews which I had been dreaming to release since the start of the project, among which: Mel Shaw by Paul F. Anderson, Paul Murry by Donald Ault, Bill Bosché by Dave Smith and the conference of Leota Toombs Thomas.

Friday, August 10, 2012

THIS book is a "must have." In fact the whole series is a "must have." In fact all books written or edited by David Gerstein are "must haves." I still can not believe how many new historical documents David manages to unearth for each volume. The essay about Wilfred Haughton by itself would justify buying the book, but it is only one of dozens of treasures contained in this volume 3. Run to get it.

Thursday, August 09, 2012

Let's be honest: this book is not a "must-have" by any stretch of the imagination, but for a hardcover souvenir book is it well done, the press photos are well selected, the text is easy to read (too easy?) and the anecdotes from Disney employees do give it a slight twist which makes it a bit more interesting. Not too bad.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

If you already have the books Toy Story -
The Art and the Making of the Animated Film and The Art of Toy Story 3 you will have seen already a lot of the artwork which this new book contains. But the fun of it are all the new interviews conducted by Charles Solomon and a large number of photographs of the artists at work. Those are the key selling points when it comes to this new volume and they are strong ones. The fact that there are even a certain number of small charming surprises in terms of artwork is the cherry on the cake.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Found on ebay recently. The caption read: [This original 1934 photo is of the interior of Kahn's Department Store in Oakland, California and shows a sign with Mickey Mouse and Minnie for their Toyland.]